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The other day I was at my mother’s while she watched one of the Law & Order franchises when a character said, “I don’t want the government telling me what I can and can’t eat.” This kind of conservative idiocy drives me up a wall because it demonstrates a complete and total lack of understanding about why we have certain laws. (And it was a cop saying it.) The government isn’t telling you what you can and can’t eat when it bans certain kinds of foods, it’s telling vendors what they can and can’t sell you, and that’s a totally different perspective. You can eat whatever you want. But you can’t sell whatever you want to somebody else to eat, especially if it might be dangerous or deadly for them. Conservatives seem to have a way of completely misrepresenting reality in their justifications for their selfish viewpoints. They aren’t interested in what’s best for everyone, only in what benefits themselves. I have some news for them: America wasn’t founded by a bunch of selfish people who only cared about themselves. It was founded by Liberals who wanted what was best for everyone.

More stupidity filled the airwaves when Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council, invited the lawyer who represented the Colorado bakery who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, citing their religious freedom as the basis. Once again, for the sake of people like Perkins and Sen Rand Paul, who do not understand the concept of “public accommodations,” if you wish to have a business open to the public, it has to be open to ALL of the public (except for people who are being disruptive or drunk.) You cannot discriminate on the basis of a number of factors, and in Colorado sexual orientation is one of them. And an administrative judge was backed up by Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission in ruling that the baker violated the anti-discrimination law. Now, notice that the law is an anti-discrimination law, yet somehow Christians feel that this law is persecuting Christians only. Perkins actually wondered out loud, “…are re-education camps next? When are they going to start rolling out the boxcars to start hauling off Christians?” I can answer that one for you in one word, Perkins – “Never!” Despite what your twisted little mind tells you, this is not Nazi Germany, there are no re-education camps (run by the government), and there will be no trains filling up with Christians to haul them off to wherever. Has it ever occurred to these “persecuted Christians” that we only object to what they’re doing when they claim their religious liberty allows them to hate people who are different? Conservative Christians seem to think that the Constitution only guarantees you the right to practice Christianity, and that if you can justify your actions as being based on the Bible, then whatever you’re doing is perfectly legal, constitutional, and moral. The real shame is that even though we on the left support their right to practice their religions, many Conservative Christians don’t practice what Christ preached. Instead, they seem to define their religion by what they hate, rather than by whom they love. Because even we atheists remember when Jesus said, “This above all, fuck everybody else and look out for Number One.”

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore believes the laws and the courts can’t function without God. If the name rings a bell, it’s because in 2003, Moore was removed from the same office for refusing to obey a federal judge’s order to remove a Ten Commandments monument Moore had erected at the courthouse. Despite the man’s obvious disregard for the law, he was mindbogglingly re-elected to the post of Chief Justice in 2012. (“Sweet Home Alabama, where the guys are such rubes…”) After such defiance, how could anyone think the man qualified to be, not just a judge, but the state’s highest elected judge? Anyway, Moore is absolutely convinced that A) God exists, and, B) The United States would not exist but for God. Of course, if the first part of his belief is false, it makes his conclusion meaningless. From the article:

The top judge in Alabama believes that the law and the courts cannot function without God.

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore made that claim at the Pierce County Prayer Breakfast in Tacoma, Washington in May while discussing the addition of “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.

The chief justice said Americans had forgotten that there was no comma between “one nation” and “under God” in the Pledge.

“When we say the Pledge, we say ‘I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation’ and we pause,” he remarked. “They didn’t mean for us to pause, ladies and gentlemen, and that pause has cost us a lot.”

“It has cost a lot because we have forgotten that God is intimately connected with this nation,” Moore continued. “Without God there would be no nation. Without God there would be no freedom to believe what you want. That goes all the way back to people like Thomas Jefferson in his bill for religious freedom. He knew what it meant. He knew the limits of civil government, and he knew who gave us that freedom to believe what we want about God, but it comes from God.”

Moore seems to believe that the current phrasing was the only one considered, but that’s not true

Congress accepts variation #1 based on a recommendation from the Library of Congress, which states, “Since the basic idea is a Nation founded on a belief in God, there would seem to be no reason for the comma after Nation.”

Why the Library of Congress should weigh in on a philosophical question bewilders me, but grammatically they weren’t exactly right, either. You see, there really isn’t any significant difference between saying “One Nation under God” and “One Nation, under God.” And I’m sure the reason people paused was because that’s the way the people who learned it before 1954 taught it to the children later, and they paused to remember that those words were added to the Socialist poem for purely political (and misguided) reasons. If you had been reciting the pledge before the new words were added, they wouldn’t naturally flow when you tried to remember to add them. For a people who allegedly practice a religion based on peace, love, and understanding, Christians sure seem to get easily offended when others aren’t as Christ-loving as the Christians hypocritically think they should be.

Which brings us to the man Jon Stewart said was “as big a dick on your show as you are on any other,” Tucker Carlson.
Carlson is no stranger to stupid comments having seemed to make a career of it. But on this particular occasion of stupidity, Carlson was trying to make the case that an older woman cannot possibly rape a 16-year-old boy. To make his argument, Carlson lies and says things a local newspaper contradicts. For example, he said a couple of times that the student pursued the older woman, but that’s not how the New York Daily News reported it. They report just the opposite happened and she went after the young boy. But then Carlson said one of the stupider things he’s said (and that says a lot), “I’ll tell you what’s wrong to this extent: he went and tattled to the police and destroyed her life.” Notice how after raping a student, it’s the boy’s fault for telling on her, and if her life is destroyed, it’s his fault. What happened to that conservative philosophy of “individual freedom, individual responsibility”? Why is it the boy’s fault his teacher raped him? He did not go after her, as Carlson says, but rather she went after him. And the only reason he told the police about it was because she got jealous because he had a date to the prom (as if he was going to ask her to be his date.) So because he reported her to the police (and she was in the wrong, after all), Carlson complains “what a whiny country this is.” Really, Carlson? Seeking justice for a sexual predator is “whiny”? I’d like to see Carlson spend a few months in prison and then come out and tell us it’s impossible for a male to be a rape victim. I really would.

This is our daily open thread. Feel free to discuss conservative stupidity (yeah, they may be redundant) or anything else you wish.

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About Wayne A. Schneider

I'm a Liberal, Libertarian, Atheist Humanist. I believe that though the world is a dangerous place, it can be made better if we stop dividing ourselves by how we're different from each other, and reach out to each other through what we have in common. And that is that we are all human beings on this planet. Please remember that.

I remember well when “under god” was added to the pledge. I was in Jr. High when the morning ritual added the words; I wouldn’t say them. I figured it was wrong to make it mandatory to say something out loud every day, something that I wasn’t sure had any validity at all. Of course, “under god” isn’t the only baloney in the pledge. The “liberty and justice for all” phrase is just about as far from true as the “under god” part; also, why pledge allegiance to a freakin’ flag in the first place? I have no allegiance to a damn flag! The Constitution, maybe, when properly interpreted and except for its errors, but a flag? Nope, sorry. I’ve not said the pledge anywhere since the mid-fifties, and don’t cross chest with right arm, either. If in a crowd I’ll stand up with the rest of them in respect for their right to believe as they wish, but that’s as far as I go.

I wonder what Tucker Carlson’s thesis would have been if the teacher who raped the teenager would have been a man instead of a woman? I’m guessing the opposite. Carlson probably envied the lad in question — the kid got lucky, probably made Carlson jealous.

As for the Perkins bullshit, it’s true that the country is not yet as extreme as was Nazi Germany, but if ‘we the people’ ever hand it over to exclusive rule by tea party wingnuts, it very likely will happen.

Carlson admitted that a male teacher having sex with a female student was completely wrong, and then admitted that, Yes, it’s a double-standard. “All standards are double-standards.” Not correct at all, but why complain about one more lie added to the several he told already?

My son killed himself after a forty-something teacher that he had a sexual relationship with broke it off. I could not counsel him on dealing with the break-up as he had been persuaded that the relationship had to be kept a secret. I wish he had told someone. Fuck you Tucker.

…“I don’t want war. I don’t want revenge,” he said, adding that he would not negotiate with “gunmen and other scoundrels” but would offer amnesty to those who “do not have the blood of peaceful citizens on their hands.”

He also offered safe passage out of Ukraine for Russian nationals who have crossed the border from Russia to join, and in some cases lead, separatist units.

Poroshenko said Ukraine must seek to mend its tattered relations with Russia, but he made clear that he would not even consider giving up its claim to Crimea…

Applying the advice and recommendations of the government (which do not have the power of law) to what one eats requires a higher effort of thinking than that which conservatives find comfortable. Studies show that low-effort thinking often yields conservative results. Since thy don’t want to think, they don’t want to have to learn what’s good for them and what’s not. So they try to claim “individual freedom” (because they think they’re required by law to change their eating habits), they denounce all government advice on how one might live a better, healthier, longer life.